


Never Get Free (Lamb to the Slaughter)

by EchoShimmer



Series: Wumptober 2020 [16]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Drugs, Gen, Hallucinations, He Has an Absolute Terrible Time In This One, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Tim Drake, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Medical Experimentation, Mild Gore, Scarecrow's Fear Toxin (DCU), Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Torture, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:41:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27310078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoShimmer/pseuds/EchoShimmer
Summary: Scarecrow has been working on some new formulas, and Red Robin has made a dangerous mistake. This does not bode well.
Series: Wumptober 2020 [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948924
Comments: 6
Kudos: 125
Collections: TimDrake works you should read





	Never Get Free (Lamb to the Slaughter)

**Author's Note:**

> Woahhh its the last day of October, we've made it! Happy Halloween everyone!
> 
> To round of the 2020 Wumptober season, I bring you arguably one of the angstiest one shots of the bunch, requested by [nighttmr!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nighttmr/pseuds/nighttmr)! It is technically a companion story to the Day 19 fic [Bye Bye, Baby Blue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27108799), but can be read separately.
> 
> Be careful with this one if you're sensitive to things like medical torture, drugging (including a brief needle or two), or torture. I decided not to mark this as mature or graphic violence since I don't go too far into the descriptions of things, but it is there. If anyone feels like that should change or if I missed any other tags/warnings let me know and I'll fix it. 
> 
> Also my Scarecrow characterization is probably not in line with cannon, considering I've mostly just seen him through fanfics at this point. Just go with it, I guess.
> 
> \---
> 
> Title from "Blood // Water" by grandson

When Tim wakes up the first time, it’s a slow, almost peaceful thing. His senses come online slowly, logging the data about his surroundings through a haze. He becomes gradually aware of the cool air against his skin, of the feeling of the medical cot underneath him, the metal of the side rails just close enough to his arms that he can feel the chill. The dull pressure of the IV in the back of his left hand.

The memories upon memories of waking up like this after a bad patrol that keeps him from automatically lashing out in response to being drugged. He has no memory of the injury, or of any of the other Bats coming to assist him, but he had enough experience with head injury that this wasn’t unheard of. The dull ache in the back of his head supported that theory well enough.

It was when Tim was listening to the familiar hum of artificial lighting and various machines at work that his brain gave him the first warning signal that something was off. It was a small detail, something that was hard to process through the haze of relaxation, but the fact that the alarm was triggered at all was enough for him to rise just that little bit further out of sleep, his thoughts becoming just that much sharper, and he realized.

He couldn’t hear the bats. The fluttering of wings and faint squeaks was always echoing through the cave, no matter the time of day. And he couldn’t hear them at all.

It took far more effort than it should have for Tim to get his eyes open, and sure enough he is not met with the intrinsically familiar ceiling of the cave. This ceiling is closer, lined with structural supports and bright lights. He’s in some sort of warehouse then. That cuts out just about all of the good options as to where he could be and why he’s here, and the fear of that starts to break further through the drugged stupor. Something is wrong here.

Trying to turn or lift his head just served to reveal to Tim that he  _ couldn’t _ , at least not more than a couple of inches before a previously unnoticed leather strap started digging into his skin. The range of motion was just enough for Tim to see a bit further down his body, making out the hospital gown (not his uniform- was he grabbed as Red or Tim?) and the very top of the leather restraints around his wrists that had also previously gone unnoticed. Now that he knew to feel for it, the pressure around his lower torso and ankles was also suspicious, not to mention impossible to get out of when coupled with the drugs. Someone had been thorough. Too thorough for it to make sense for teenage CEO Tim Wayne, which meant that he was dealing with someone who now most likely had managed to figure out his civilian identity. He  _ needed  _ more data.

There was nothing left to do but wait. Fortunately, he wasn’t left to wait for very long before a door was opening somewhere to his right. There must be some type of monitoring equipment on him then, a camera or vitals monitor of some sort. Tim strained his head to the side as the footsteps approached, trying to see who his captor was.

He was almost positive his heart skipped a beat when he was met with the familiar, currently unmasked face of one Dr. Jonathan Crane smiling forebodingly down at him.

Flashes of memories- the weeks of tracking Scarecrow’s suspiciously silent movements since his last escape, the lost sleep due to working on it around all of his other responsibilities. Deciding to go in solo for some reconnaissance, messing up, a fight, His rebreather cracking, fear gas, hallucinations just starting to take hold before there was a blunt blow to the back of his head, and then-

“Ah, the patient is awake,” the man said appraisingly. “A bit sooner than I anticipated, fascinating. You will make the most fascinating test subject, Mr. Red Robin. Or would you prefer I refer to you as Mr. Drake-Wayne?” Tim had to work through the flood of panic before he could even think of how to respond, but even as he opened his mouth- to deny it or threaten Crane he didn’t know for sure- the doctor was raising a hand dismissively.

“Don’t bother, I don’t particularly care  _ who _ you Bats are under the mask. Though, the thought that I  _ know  _ does make for a lovely thing to haunt you in the middle of the night, doesn’t it?” There was that smile again, intelligent and knowing and  _ just _ manic enough that Tim’s overwhelmed mind kept trying to make parallels to his many run-ins with the Joker. Tim would honestly prefer the Scarecrow mask to this weird mock-friendliness, he was used to that at least. “No, at the moment I am much more interested in the data that you can give me as a test subject.

“I’ve been working on a couple new formulas, you see? But there’s no way to know how one of you vigilante’s will react, what with how you’ve worked over the years to inoculate yourselves against my work. I have to keep up. And when my sensors managed to flag your intrusion- well, it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. The little Robin who fled the nest. Or were you thrown out, no one on the outside could ever really decide one way or the other. Either way, you were certainly all on your own last night. I wonder if anyone will even come looking for you. Want to bet?”

“Fuck you,” Tim managed around his cotton tongue.

“Ooo, such a harsh reaction, did I hit a nerve there? No matter. You were always one of the most fascinating of Batman’s brood to me, did you know? You’re so much like  _ him _ , a detective before everything else, frustratingly good at hiding emotions and stifling reactions. But now we have plenty of time to get to know each other better. I wonder what trauma’s are hiding in that brain of yours, or how your body will respond when exposed to my newer concoctions. I can’t  _ wait _ to find out.”

Crane stepped away for a moment, out of Tim’s sight line. Drawers opened and closed somewhere nearby, and then he was back again and fiddling with Tim’s IV line. Tim just barely caught the flash of a needle before whatever it was was dripping into his veins, sending his nerves prickling with a strange, almost ghostly feeling of warning that combined strangely with the still-present numbing effect of the other drugs. The edges of his vision flashed with shadows that weren’t really there, the world bending slightly.  _ It’s not real _ , he tried to remind himself as his heartbeat picked up ever so slightly. 

It felt similar to fear toxin, but  _ different _ . This wasn’t full blown hallucinations, at least not yet. It was worrying. He didn’t know what was coming, he couldn’t get away-

“Feel free to scream as much as you want, no one will hear you here,” Crane is saying, and suddenly he’s in a mask, the medical kind, and he’s wearing gloves and holding a scalpel. Had Tim lost some time there? Time seems to move in slow motion as Tim tries to follow the path of the blade through the air with the edges of his vision, tries vainly to regain control of his body and get free, until the sharp edge is digging shallowly into his upper arm.

The cut itself is small, not an injury that would normally be worthy of worry considering Tim’s normal nighttime gig. But something about this scenario- the drugs in his bloodstream or something on the blade or a combination of both- set the wound  _ burning _ , pain lighting up and down Tim’s arms as his nerves all simultaneously scream out in agony. Worse, the sensation keeps spreading, working it’s way up Tim’s shoulder, to his chest and the base of his neck and beyond. 

Before he even had the chance to fully panic, the pain had taken over everything, and Tim found himself screaming despite himself, losing his train of thought as he was pulled into the depths of the sensation.

\---

Tim doesn’t know how long it was, before he managed to claw his way back to some sort of conscious thought. There had been some other hazy moments, flashes of pain and Crane’s captivated expression, flickers of thought amid the torrent of panic. Tim is alone now, he thinks. Or, at least, Crane is gone from his post at Tim’s side from which he had been observing.

There’s a new sensation now, a painfully familiar presence watching from out of his line of sight. The watchful weight of Batman, his once-adoptive father and partner in crime fighting. Tim withers weakly against the restraints, desperate to know for sure whether Batman is really there. Is he going to save Tim from this, the cold and pain and fear that's slowly burrowing its way into his bones?

Tim can’t say anything around the oxygen mask that had at some point been strapped over his face. He can’t wiggle enough to get free, can’t turn his head to look over. Was Batman really there, or was this just his brain trying to give him some modicum of comfort? Some weird aftereffect of the latest toxin?

If it really was Batman, he didn’t say anything, didn’t move closer. There was no other sign to confirm or deny his presence in the shadows at the edge of Tim’s vision. After a short time, Tim’s eyes started to grow more unfocused as the drugs overtake him, and he sunk back down into the haze once again.

\---

Tim has lost all sense of time with how he’s slipping in and out of consciousness at Crane’s will. He doesn’t know how many “experiments” Crane had run anymore, having quickly lost count. There was very little time to recover between each trial, and after a time everything started to blur together. He’s not sure that he really wants to know, but thinking about it was a much needed distraction, so wonder he did.

This last one had been more of a classic fear gas, hallucinations of all the people he had failed, all the horrors he had seen, the sound of silence filling an empty house. He never becomes numb to it, he can never block it out, it never stops hurting. As he manages to eventually rise to consciousness, as the hallucinations fade away, Tim is distantly aware of screaming. Part of him thinks it might have been his own, but it fades off soon enough. At this point he’s kind of passed caring.

“Fascinating,” Crane says as Tim’s reality struggles to piece itself back together once again. “Your body fought off the effects of this one much better than the previous test subjects. Almost an eighth of them died from that dosage. Is it your past exposures that are affecting your resistance to the new formulas, or is it just something genetic? We’ll have to run some more tests, get some more data. Maybe even take a few samples so I can study the effects at the cellular level. After all, it seems we have the time, doesn’t it?”

\---

‘Samples’, as it turns out, meant even more pain. A tube shoved down his throat to reach his stomach, various carefully selected cuts down his arms and legs. Some were shallow, some cutting deeper. Blood is drawn, small sections of skin and muscle actually cut away and stitched closed. He has just enough sensation to realize what’s happening, and once again the helplessness of his situation hits him full force. Tim is numbed constantly, fed an endless mixture of drugs and nutrients to keep him on the edge of awareness, the edge of life. He can do nothing to stop it.

At one point, something new is injected into Tim’s IV, something stronger, and it knocks him out near instantly. He wakes up an indeterminate time later to a deeper, aching pain over his stomach. There is a familiar pull of stitches as he breathes, as he tries to move.

He doesn’t know what Crane did to him. This was something beyond what had been the status quo so far. Tim had been awake for everything else, a small mercy that allowed him to more or less know what was being done to him, some modicum of ‘control’ over the situation, but this time he had no idea. What the hell had Crane done to him?

The panic rose quickly, Tim’s breath growing unsteady under the restraining pressure of the oxygen mask, his pained limbs refusing to respond as he wanted them to through the drugs and restraints. Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes. Tim didn’t want to be here anymore. He wanted to get up and flee, run anywhere else other than here. His apartment, Titan’s Tower, the Office, the Manor. He wanted to see his friends and family, no matter how distant they had become. He wanted them to tell him that it was okay, to bundle himself under a horde of soft blankets and lean into the closest warm body as they gently ushered him into a peaceful sleep.

The memories weren’t enough, too distant from Tim’s current reality to offer any relief. The edges of his vision gradually grew dark once again, and he slipped back into unconsciousness.

\---

The next time Tim awoke, the first sensations he got were of pain. His eyes opened, but everything around him was blurry enough from the drugs and pain and  _ everything else  _ that he had to blink a few times before he could focus on anything. He was getting weaker, getting sloppy. He couldn’t afford to let himself slip before someone could come save him.

Tim was alone again this time. Crane was gone from his typical spot at the side of the bed, there was no distant scratching of a pencil or opening of drawers or breathing. Only the distant humming of lights, the quiet blips of the monitoring machines somewhere out of Tim’s vision, the drip of Tim’s IV. 

He was alone. And then a shadow detached itself from the rafters above him.

Batman dropped to the floor silently down the edges of Tim’s vision, dipping out of range as he absorbed the impact before rising again and moving to stand by Tim’s side, around where Crane typically resided. More shadows followed swiftly behind, Nightwing and Hood and Robin all appearing in positions next to him as well. They. They were actually  _ here _ .

Tim is crying before Batman even moves to pull the oxygen mask free, suddenly overwhelmed with the rush of emotion that he’s been suppressing all this time. Days? Weeks? It doesn’t matter anymore, now that he’s being rescued. 

“B,” he manages hoarsely around his battered throat. “Guys. You’re finally here.” He wiggles an arm, ignoring the pain at the movement in his eagerness to get free. “Can we- can we get out of here, please? I just want to go  _ home _ .”

It takes him a moment, to process that something is amiss. That Nightwing hasn’t started his relieved flood of reassurances like Tim remembered, that Hood hadn’t tried to make a joke, that Robin hadn’t done anything but stare. It was Batman’s white-lensed gaze that felt the heaviest, boring into Tim. He was held in place by that emotionless expression, suddenly filled with a sinking dread. They wouldn’t, it couldn’t have been-

“You failed,” was all Batman said, and Tim’s world crashed down around him. “It was a simple test to see if you could work alone while gathering information on Scarecrow, and when you made a mistake with that to see if you could escape on your own. It should have been simple, and yet here we are a week later.”

“I  _ told _ you he wouldn’t manage it,” Hood cut in, voice modulator on full strength. “He’s all brain, no brawn.”

“Tt, even in that regard Drake is rather lackluster. He didn’t catch that Crane had laid a trap, did he?”

“Come on guys,” Nightwing said, turning to frown at the younger vigilante’s, tone only lightly disapproving and heavily pitying. “He tried, at least. It’s not his fault that Tim wasn’t good enough. It’s just how he is, isn’t it?”

Tim was frozen. Tim was made of stone, mute as the conversation progressed, unable to restart his brain enough to speak up. The tears that slid down his cheeks were silent, his steadily building shaking the only thing that somewhat slipped through the wall of disbelief.

“Hm,” is all Batman said, eyes flickering between the other Vigilante’s and Tim. “Yes, I should have known better than to expect so much from him. He’s always been a rather helpless child.”

“No,” Tim finally choked out, “I’m sorry, I’ll do better. Just get me out of here and I’ll train harder, I’ll cover more cases, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll- I’ll even quit, if I have to.  _ Please _ .” 

The conversation continued on above him as if he hadn’t spoken.

“You know,” Hood was saying, “he might be kind of useless as a vigilante, but the data that Crane was able to get off of him could be useful even for us.”

“Huh, not a half bad idea, Todd. I guess you do have a brain sometimes.”

“It would be useful to get more data for antitoxins… and he does have a lot of the same immunities as us…”

“No,” Tim moaned, struggling again hopelessly to get free from his bindings. “No, don’t do this, you can’t!” But no one listened to him. 

Tim kept waiting to wake up, to break free of this nightmare. This couldn’t be real. But his fear gas hallucinations had always been inclined towards emotional and mental rather than physical, and there was none of the typical fuzziness around the edges that he had been trained to look for. He wasn’t waking up.

They were still talking, almost growing excited now in the face of new information. Robin disappears from Batman’s side for a moment, and returns holding a surgical blade, Tim’s heartbeat swells in his ears as Batman takes it from him, all four ignorant to Tim’s cries.

The blade cuts into the center of Tim’s chest, and after the moment of pure shock that knocked the breath from his lungs, Tim is screaming against the pain, hardly able to do anything against the attack. The pain builds and builds and builds over the rush of adrenaline that sends his heartbeat sky high, worse than anything Tim had ever experienced. It was so much,  _ too _ much to process.

Finally, the pain reaches a point where Tim’s body can no longer process the sensations, and his surroundings and awareness all fade away at once.

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaand that's a wrap! Thank you to everyone who's read, kudos'd and commented throughout this month. I had so much fun getting to write these prompts for you all, you're all awesome :D.
> 
> There's going to be a bit of a gap following this, while I focus my attention towards wrangling the Lazarus!Tim sequel and the next part of What Makes Us Human into order. Hopefully something will be posted by mid-December at the latest. Until then, everyone stay safe and I'll see you next time <3


End file.
